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A review by pearseanderson
Touch by Alexi Zentner
5.0
Zentner is a god. I have an award-winning book review about this book, so I should probably go ahead and just copy it into here. Okay. Just gotta say, this is still one of my favorite books.
Though the year is still young, I believe that Touch by Alexi Zentner will be the best novel I read in 2015. Zentner, a local author, has built a temple to time, relationships, nature, and Americana in this close-to-perfect tale of magical realism. I met with Zentner to discuss writing and Touch.
All of Touch takes place in Sawgamet, a boomtown in the northern woods of Rupert’s Land, the frontier above Quebec. When the novel takes place is another story. Touch’s narrator is Stephen Boucher, a pastor refusing to stay asleep on the night his mother will die. She’s sick and old, and as her temperature boils over Stephen begins to reminisce on all his ancestors who have lived in Sawgamet. Through this literary device, Touch takes place in any moment Stephen remembers or remembers being told in the last seventy years, from the 1870s to the 1940s. The Boucher name is traced back from Stephen to his father Pierre, and then to his grandfather, Jeannot. Zentner refuses to view time as linear as he mixes the past with the present, along with inklings of the future in every chapter. It’s more a solvable mystery for the reader rather than a confusing Pollockian mess. Each page I turned revealed new motivations, atmospheric details, and Chekov guns that go off in the next seventy years of the story.
Another brilliant way Zentner plays with time is through the relationships in Touch. Death does not mean a characters is lost or that they stop growing and developing, it simply means they may not appear in person down the timeline. Mothers, uncles, and friends still are present as stories, memories, and spirits throughout any part of the novel. I never felt like death is an end, because as long as Stephen continues to talk about the town, the people live on forever. “When you think about people who are important to us, they’re still important to us even if they aren’t in front of us. So whether or not they are in the room, or whether or not they are alive, they can still be premier in our lives, and that’s one of the questions of the book,” Zentner told me when we sat down to talk. This concept is pulled off seamlessly, and gives the novel another layer of depth and beauty.
On the note of relationships, Touch has one of great uniqueness and importance. Along with the main characters (mostly the Boucher family) there is another key character who has its own relationship with everyone else—winter. Winter is omnipresent in every paragraph of Touch. No matter the circumstances or characters, winter will rear its epic head. All characters eventually have an intimate relationship with winter, knowing the way snow sticks to their skin and hoarfrost to their beards and sharp coldness to their bones. Winter shapes the gold-mining town of Sawgamet into something dangerous and foreboding. Every time the meltwaters flowed in Touch I knew the next terrifying winter would only be a few steps away, and with it, life-changing decisions by the novel’s characters. “People who are in trouble show themselves more clearly than people not in trouble,” Zentner said. “It’s really easy to be a wonderful guy when nothing is going wrong.”
Nature, not just winter, is ubiquitous in Sawgamet. Magic blends with the reality as Native American demons, such as the wehtikos and qallupilluit, roam the edge of the same forest men erect lumber mills and gold mines. “When you’re out in the woods and it’s dark, and you’re walking and you hear a branch break behind you, there’s a moment where you’re unsure if you believe in monsters. I think I was acknowledging the space on this country” Zenter explained to me, detailing how large North America is and how much, whether mythical or actual, can exist in the world. This reasoning was a driving force in including such creatures. Townsfolk accept such beings like they inhabit the same world as us. Zenter argued that people today do the same thing as the townsfolk do in Touch: accept the unexplainable. Airplanes, phones, self-driving cars, he said, are all forms of magic we choose to live with and not question. The shape-shifters and blood-drinkers of Inuit legend are, to Zentner, the magic that people lived with before magic was overtaken by technology, though the two are now indistinguishable.
Touch is brilliant in its portrayal of an Americana-rich atmosphere. Touch is very much a book about masculinity and fatherhood, and the atmosphere shows that. “The themes I keep coming back to are the themes I am interested in in my own life. I tend to write about family, and obligation, and duty, and the way those come in conflict with desire and wants.” Friends bruise themselves sliding down the amateur waterslide. Men ride on islands of floating timber downstream. Trailsmen pass each other in the woods and silently nod. These small details build a perfect small-town environment, one where the American Dream is still within reach and everything seems endless. Zentner pairs this environment with American folklore and myth in a perfect duo. Golden deer, songbird swarms, and singing dogs bring another element of beauty and magic to Sawgamet. Touch is a masterfully crafted novel I would recommend to whoever wants a good story about life, magic, and family that will leave you breathless, satisfied, and wanting more.
Though the year is still young, I believe that Touch by Alexi Zentner will be the best novel I read in 2015. Zentner, a local author, has built a temple to time, relationships, nature, and Americana in this close-to-perfect tale of magical realism. I met with Zentner to discuss writing and Touch.
All of Touch takes place in Sawgamet, a boomtown in the northern woods of Rupert’s Land, the frontier above Quebec. When the novel takes place is another story. Touch’s narrator is Stephen Boucher, a pastor refusing to stay asleep on the night his mother will die. She’s sick and old, and as her temperature boils over Stephen begins to reminisce on all his ancestors who have lived in Sawgamet. Through this literary device, Touch takes place in any moment Stephen remembers or remembers being told in the last seventy years, from the 1870s to the 1940s. The Boucher name is traced back from Stephen to his father Pierre, and then to his grandfather, Jeannot. Zentner refuses to view time as linear as he mixes the past with the present, along with inklings of the future in every chapter. It’s more a solvable mystery for the reader rather than a confusing Pollockian mess. Each page I turned revealed new motivations, atmospheric details, and Chekov guns that go off in the next seventy years of the story.
Another brilliant way Zentner plays with time is through the relationships in Touch. Death does not mean a characters is lost or that they stop growing and developing, it simply means they may not appear in person down the timeline. Mothers, uncles, and friends still are present as stories, memories, and spirits throughout any part of the novel. I never felt like death is an end, because as long as Stephen continues to talk about the town, the people live on forever. “When you think about people who are important to us, they’re still important to us even if they aren’t in front of us. So whether or not they are in the room, or whether or not they are alive, they can still be premier in our lives, and that’s one of the questions of the book,” Zentner told me when we sat down to talk. This concept is pulled off seamlessly, and gives the novel another layer of depth and beauty.
On the note of relationships, Touch has one of great uniqueness and importance. Along with the main characters (mostly the Boucher family) there is another key character who has its own relationship with everyone else—winter. Winter is omnipresent in every paragraph of Touch. No matter the circumstances or characters, winter will rear its epic head. All characters eventually have an intimate relationship with winter, knowing the way snow sticks to their skin and hoarfrost to their beards and sharp coldness to their bones. Winter shapes the gold-mining town of Sawgamet into something dangerous and foreboding. Every time the meltwaters flowed in Touch I knew the next terrifying winter would only be a few steps away, and with it, life-changing decisions by the novel’s characters. “People who are in trouble show themselves more clearly than people not in trouble,” Zentner said. “It’s really easy to be a wonderful guy when nothing is going wrong.”
Nature, not just winter, is ubiquitous in Sawgamet. Magic blends with the reality as Native American demons, such as the wehtikos and qallupilluit, roam the edge of the same forest men erect lumber mills and gold mines. “When you’re out in the woods and it’s dark, and you’re walking and you hear a branch break behind you, there’s a moment where you’re unsure if you believe in monsters. I think I was acknowledging the space on this country” Zenter explained to me, detailing how large North America is and how much, whether mythical or actual, can exist in the world. This reasoning was a driving force in including such creatures. Townsfolk accept such beings like they inhabit the same world as us. Zenter argued that people today do the same thing as the townsfolk do in Touch: accept the unexplainable. Airplanes, phones, self-driving cars, he said, are all forms of magic we choose to live with and not question. The shape-shifters and blood-drinkers of Inuit legend are, to Zentner, the magic that people lived with before magic was overtaken by technology, though the two are now indistinguishable.
Touch is brilliant in its portrayal of an Americana-rich atmosphere. Touch is very much a book about masculinity and fatherhood, and the atmosphere shows that. “The themes I keep coming back to are the themes I am interested in in my own life. I tend to write about family, and obligation, and duty, and the way those come in conflict with desire and wants.” Friends bruise themselves sliding down the amateur waterslide. Men ride on islands of floating timber downstream. Trailsmen pass each other in the woods and silently nod. These small details build a perfect small-town environment, one where the American Dream is still within reach and everything seems endless. Zentner pairs this environment with American folklore and myth in a perfect duo. Golden deer, songbird swarms, and singing dogs bring another element of beauty and magic to Sawgamet. Touch is a masterfully crafted novel I would recommend to whoever wants a good story about life, magic, and family that will leave you breathless, satisfied, and wanting more.